Australia’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has lashed out at a study, that claims cat food attracts meat ants which attack baby cane toads as the emerge from the water, as the most effective weapon against the cane toads.

Their response came after a study conducted by researchers at the University of Sydney who claimed it was the most effective way to eliminate the cane toads that threaten species across Australia.
 

“The RSPCA recognizes that cane toads must be controlled, but urges researchers to concentrate on identifying effective methods that do not cause unnecessary pain or distress,” a statement issued by the society said.
 

Details of the study’s findings were published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Applied Ecology, earlier this week.
 

The cane toad was introduced from Hawaii in 1935 in an unsuccessful attempt to control beetles on sugarcane plantations. The toads bred rapidly, and their millions-strong population now threatens many species across Australia. Cane toads emit a poison that attacks the heart of would-be predators.
 

University researcher Rick Shine said that meat ants are apparently impervious to the toad’s poison. "A single toad can have 30,000 eggs in a clutch, so there's a heck of a lot of tadpoles turning into toads along the edge of a billabong," he said. "You can literally have tens of thousands of toads emerging at pretty much the same time. They are vulnerable to meat ants if the colony discovers there is a source of free food."
 

For three months, the researchers studied tens of thousands of cane toads emerging from ponds where cat food had been scattered, and found 98 per cent of them were attacked by meat ants within two minutes, and of those who succeeded in escaping, 80 per cent died within days, they said.

The researchers said the baby cane toads are about the same size as the meat ant.
 

However one Australian official said the methods are not powerful enough . "The impact of meat ants on cane toads can be significant with a small number of cane toads, but when you get areas where there are large numbers of cane toads it doesn't seem to make any difference at all," Graeme Sawyer of Frogwatch said.

(AP contributed to this report)